PaletteSwap

I'm happy to announce PaletteSwap, a tool for editing sprites and portraits in Super Turbo. This is the tool that I've been using to create the ST Alternate Color Set. 

I've created a video on how to use it:

Happy modding!

Feel free to drop by our discord: https://discord.gg/x3WWkGU

Chun Li ground links

I've been doing testing with my improved training mode, and have collected some data on Chun Li's ground links. I wanted to see exactly, in game, how many frames the player has to input ground links. 

Methodology

First, I set the game to no frame skipping. While my frame counter does take frame skipping into account, I wanted to avoid any confusion or source of errors.

I then picked a link. I'll use her low mk, low mk link for the image below. I press low mk for 1 frame. This is shown in the frame counter that I've highlighted with the red box below. I then wait 30 frames in the down/back position. I then press low mk again. This shows up as a 2-hit combo. In my notes, I would make this as "31 - combo". This means that 31 frames after pressing the first button, I pressed the second button. The 31 number comes from 30 frames of neutral, plus 1 press for the first press.

I'll give another, slightly more complex example. In the example below, I test standing mp to crouching mk. I'm initially 72 frames in neutral. I press mp for 5 frames. Then towards for 4 frames. Then down towards for 3 frames. Then neutral for 3 frames, followed by 13 frames in down. I then press and hold down and mk for 5 frames, but the number of frames held is irrelevant. The total here would be 5+4+3+3+13 = 28 frames. I would mark this as "28 - combo".

Results

Here are my results:

Low mp -> low hk (2f window)

27 - no combo

28 - combo

29 - combo

30 - no combo

31 - no combo

Low mk -> low hk (2f window)

27 - no combo

28 - combo

29 - combo

30 - no combo

31 - no combo

Low mk -> close stand hp (4f window)

26 - no combo

27 - no combo

28 - combo

29 - combo

30 - combo

31 - combo

32 - no combo

Stand close mp -> close stand hp (5f window)

26 - no combo

27 - combo

28 - combo

29 - combo

30 - combo

31 - combo

32 - no combo

Low mk -> low mk (4f window)

26 - no combo

27 - no combo

28 - combo

29 - combo

30 - combo

31 - combo

32 - no combo

Stand close mp -> low mk (5f window)

26 - no combo

27 - combo

28 - combo

29 - combo

30 - combo

31 - combo

32 - no combo

33 - no combo

Conclusion

I was surprised by a few things. 

First, I had no idea that low mk to low hk was a two frame link. It's a staple of my play, and I thought it was much easier. In fact, you must press low hk either 28 or 29 frames exactly after a low mk to link.

Secondly, I did not realize that close stand hp was such a fast move. Its startup speed makes it twice as easy to link as low hk. Afer a low mk, you can press the stand hp 28, 29, 30, or 31 frames afterwards and still link.

Thirdly, I didn't realize that stand mp makes links 1 frame easier than crouching mp or crouching mk. Using stand mp lets you press the second button on frame 27, increasing your window by one.

So all in all, the easiest link for Chun Li is close stand mp into close stand hp. This has a generous five frame window. I've been incorporating this into my play, but there is an important gotcha: while the close standing hp hits crouching opponents, the far standing hp will not. So if your opponent is crouching and you are a bit far away, your combo has the risk of whiffing if far stand hp comes out. In this case, the safest and easiest option is to use standing mp into crouching mk, which still keeps the generous five frame window and hits crouching opponents.

The case against double elimination

The origins of double elimination

Double elimination began as a tournament format in American arcades in the 1990s. The first major "internet tournament" was called B3, and was the precursor to Evo as we know it today. Before B3, there were local arcade tournaments. B3 was the first touranment organized by the nascent fighting game community, by the players, for the players, where people were traveling from across the US and even from foreign countries.

I was part of the B3 planning group, and there were two major constraints that we had to deal with. 

The first was that there was a limited number of arcade machines. There was a large number of people going to show up, and only a handful of machines. We needed to find a format that would accommodate a large number of players, but a limited number of machines. We had negotiated the venue for a day, and the tournament had to finish in one day's play time.

The second constraint was respect for traveling players. We had players coming from all over the US and even abroad. We knew that players had come to play, and we wanted to allow players to play as many games as possible, win or lose.

We discussed a few options:

1) Round Robin
In round robin, every player plays against every other player. Great format for a small number of people. But impractical for a large number of contestants. With 64 players, we'd have 2,016 matches to run. Completely out of the question.

2) Single Elimination
Fast, efficient, and brutal. This is the preferred format of Japanese arcades, although we didn't know it at the time. For a tournament with 64 players, there would be only 63 matches played, a very manageable number. With that said, we felt that it would be deeply unfair for players that had traveled from across the world to potentially play one game and be done.

3) Double elimination.

A reasonable compromise given the constraints. Everyone gets to play at minimum two games. The major disadvantage is that the losers bracket is a long, long morass. All in all, up to 127 matches are played. Another disadvantage is that you can easily get eliminated by a friend that you play with all the time at your local events. Nobody wants to fly across the country only to play someone you play at home.

We ended up going with a hybrid system. We broke up the entrants into two groups of 32, ran qualifying pools, and then put the pool winners into a 32 man double elimination bracket. This ensured that everyone got at least two games in, while cutting down the number of matches to a manageable level. 

Even in the tournament, people found themselves matched up against friends from their region, and so the organizers came up with the idea of "floating" -- adjusting your match and place in the bracket on the fly to prevent some match ups. This was a tremendous amount of work, and the organizing team, led by Tony Cannon, did a heroic job.

Some reading:

• B3 announcement
• Tony Cannon's official b3 report (part 1) 
• Tony Cannon's official b3 report (part 2)
• Tony Cannon's full match by match breakdown of B3
• B3 thanks
  

B3 was a great success, and after it followed B2, B4, and a string of tournaments that became Evo as we know it today. The pools->double elimination system worked well, players understood it, and it became the standard.

Online vs Offline

Skilled players used to be a small and select group. In order to be good, you had to be a strong, motivated player. You had to have access to core group of strong and motivated players. The "B" tournaments showed us that while there were many people with talent all over the globe, that talent did not translate to tournament success. You had to have talented and a strong group of players that played regular games. And not just regular games, but regular competitive, cutthroat games. 

The rise of online gaming completely changed this dynamic. Online play meant that anyone with motivation could find games at any time. We saw an explosion of success, as single isolated players with no local groups could become tournament powerhouses thanks to regular play and online tournaments. We now see regular tournaments all over the globe -- USA/Canada, Europe, Mexico, Brazil, Latin America all have strong and regular regional online tournaments.

Most of these tournaments, out of historical precedence, have adopted the double elimination format. The double elimination format, which originally was a compromise made in order to accommodate a limited number of physical machines, has become the de facto standard because "that's they way it's always been".

There is a key difference with online tournaments, which is that there is no time constraint on the number of matches. Since each player can play directly with another, the time constraint becomes the number of rounds. This is an important difference, so it bears spelling out:

In a physical arcade with a limited number of machines (1-3), the key determiner of tournament length is the number of matches played. If you have twenty matches to play on one machine, each group of players needs to line up, wait their turn, and play their match. Assuming five minutes per match, those twenty matches will take take 100 minutes, or almost a couple of hours to run!

In an online tournament, those same twenty matches can all be run in parallel. Each person connects directly with their opponent, runs their game, and reports the result. In our example, the twenty matches, that would have taken hours on a physical machine, can all be run in five minutes online.

The difference is colossal. Minutes versus hours. The key constraint that had led to the adoption of double elimination as a tournament standard, has been is completely removed.

Tournament Formats

It's now worth going back to the drawing board, and thinking about what tournament options we have that are available to us for streamed, online tournaments. We have a few guidelines to work with:

* Timeliness The tournament format should be timely. It should run in a predictable amount of time. Streamers often have a time budget, and viewers have a set amount of time. A tournament should neither take an inordinate amount of time to run, nor should it be highly variable.

* Fairness. The tournament format should reward top players. We should expect to see highly skilled players at the top.

* Excitement. The tournament format should culminate in a grand finals. The streamer should be able to build audience excitement over the course of the tournament, following key players, important matches, and build a narrative and story with the audience.
 
* Understandability. The tournament format should be easy to understand for viewers. Viewers join and leave streams at any point in the tournament. They should be able to jump in, and quickly understand the state of the tournament to participate as a viewer.

* Inclusivity. The tournament should be rewarding for new players. They should feel included, welcome, and have fun, regardless of performance.

* Maximizes matches. Last but not least, the format should allow players to play as many matches as possible. Players come to tournaments to test their skill against opponents in a formal setting. As many competitive matches should be played as possible.

The last point is perhaps the most important one. The point of a tournament is not to "weed out" weaker players until one reigns supreme. The point of a tournament is to allow as many people as possible to play competitive games, and to determine the winner!

With these in mind, let's grade double elimination in the online format.

Timeliness: Not great. There are many rounds, and the number of rounds is variable depending on the number of players.
Fairness. Overall pretty fair. Sometimes a strong player will get eliminated by two top players early -- usually if a top player loses their first round, they go and wreack havoc in the losers bracket. But other than that, the results are fairly consistent.
Excitement: The grand finals build up is good. Once the tournament is narrowed to the top 8, it's a good watch.

Understandability: This gets a poor grade. The loses bracket is hard to follow. As a spectator, you're more or less relegated to watching chosen matches from the streamer until the top 8. You constantly have to check the bracket to understand what's going on.
Inclusivity. Another low grade. A full quarter of the players will get eliminated 0-2. That's just not fun. It's not even about losing twice, it's losing twice and not getting to play anymore that's unfun.
Maximizes matches. Very poor. A small number of players get to play many matches, but half the players play only 2 or 3 matches, regardless of tournament size. Not good.

A grade of 2/6. We can surely do better than that! 

Let's consider another format : Swiss into single elim top 8. This is the format that is used in Chess, Magic: the Gathering, and many other events. 

In Swiss, everyone plays a set number of rounds (let's say 8). In each round, each player is matched up against an opponent with the same score. So if you are 0-3 after three rounds, your next opponent will also be 0-3. If you're 2-1, your opponent will also be 2-1. 

After eight rounds of swiss, the top eight players are taken into a single elimination bracket, and a final winner is crowned.

Let's grade this:

Timeliness: Excellent. The tournament always takes the same amount of time, regardless of the number of players. This is because there are always a set number of rounds. The tournament organizer can make the tournament longer by increasing the number of rounds. The top 8 always takes the same amount of time as well, and goes by very fast in single elim.
Fairness. Very fair. Everyone gets to play eight full rounds, so even if you get a bad draw early and lose twice in a row, you can climb out of the bottom bracket by winning your next 6 and make it to the top 8.
Excitement: The swiss part is great, because the streamer can pick a feature match each round to showcase. You always have the full roster of players to choose from. The top 8 format is exciting, with strong players, and an undisputed winner.

Understandability: Much easier to follow mid stream. If someone starts watching mid tournament, all they need to know is what round it is
Inclusivity. Great for new players. As a new player progresses in the tournament, they will face easier and easier opponents. No more getting crushed 0-2 and out.
Maximizes matches. Excellent. Everyone gets at least 8 matches. The very top players will get more than that, but only a few more. The top 8 takes three matches to complete, so the two finalists play 11 matches total.

This system beats double elimination in every dimension. It's a clear win. And, it's supported directly in challonge.

"All right, all right", I can hear you say. "That's all great in theory, but how does it work in reality?"

I'm glad you asked!

• Monday night fights has been doing this system for over three years. You can check out their archive here: https://www.twitch.tv/arkadeum/videos
  
  
• The european ST league has been starting to adopt this. Their trial tournament was overwhelmingly positive: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/630652852?collection=9jz64n9ovRV67Q
  
  
• The second european ST league swiss tournament: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/642179858

It's time to put double elimination to rest. All online tournaments should be Swiss.

Improved Training Mode

The problem

POF's improved training mode is a great tool for training, but I was always frustrated by a few limitations. One, the interface doesn't detect button releases. This means that when doing a negative edge special move, you can't see when you release the button. 

The second problem is that frame count isn't shown. You don't know how many frames each input was done far.

Virtua fighter has by far the best training mode. On the screen below, the numbers in grey represent the number of frames of no input, while the numbers in yellow represent the number of frames in active input.

I wanted to have a similar interface for Super Turbo.

Let's go over the features in detail. First, if you're standing and idling (meaning no inputs), you'll see a counter in grey showing you how many frames you've been idle

In this image, Ken has been idle for 40 frames as you can see from the grey number "40" at the top left. The counter stops at 999, as you can see for Boxer on the right.

The next feature is button release tracking. 

In this image, you can see that Ken spent 72 frames in idle, followed by pressing and holding the three kick buttons for 356 frames. He then released the heavy kick, holding the remaining two kicks for 85 frames. He then held the light kick button for 74 frames.

Let's see how these two features in combination show a negative edge move

Here, Ken is doing a piano negative edge fireball. You can see left midscreen, the grey 97 shows that he was idly for 97 frames. At this point, he presses all three buttons. First he hits and holds light punch for one frame, then light and medium punch for three frames, and then finally all three punches for 133 frames. He then does the fireball motion while holding all three punches. The fireball motion finishes with the stick in the towards position with all three punches held. Then one frame later, he release heavy punch, triggering the fireball special move. He then releases medium punch one frame later, and finally light punch seven frames later.

Another feature is frameskip tracking. Super Turbo skips frames. Even if the display shows only one frame, the engine might run two frames.Thanks to Born2SPD, I was able to account for skipped frames ensuring a correct frame count.

This is all great, but how do I actually run this?

I've put the script up on github here:

https://github.com/zass30/SuperTurboExtendedInputDisplay

1) Download sf2-hitboxes_and_VF_input.lua from this link.

2) Download and install pof or Born2SPD's training mode package.
3) Modify the batch file (the file you double click on) to say -lua "sf2-hitboxes_and_VF_input.lua"

Happy training, VF style!

Evo 2009

I got 9th place at evo 2009 this year, for HD Remix. It's kind of funny, because I also got 9th last year, where I missed top 8 by a sliver of health.



I lost to John Choi, who crushed me in a ryu vs claw and then ryu vs chun li match. It really drove home to me that I didn't have a good answer to ryu, and I need to brush up on some character that will do better against shotos. I then lost a really good set to Graham Wolfe. We played Chun vs Boxer (he won), Chun vs Boxer (I won), then Chun vs Claw (he won). Thanks for the great games guys!

I mostly played Chun Li throughout the tournament, picking Dictator twice as well. I did a lot better than I expected, thinking that there would be a lot of talented new blood from xbox live. I'm really happy to have gotten 9th, of course, but I have to admit that I'm a little bit disappointed to have missed top 8 by such a close set two years in a row. With that said, I'm really happy with how the northwest group as a team did. Myself, Jason Cole, and BBH all tied for 9th, and Axel Kelly tied for 13th. I think that's a great team showing!

There was also a really fun team regional 3v3 tournament. The tournament was originally scheduled to be 5v5, but we had to pare it down to 3v3. Our 5 man team was going to be: RaybladeX, BBH, Jason Cole, Axel Kelly, and myself. Rayblade was judging so it made it hard for him to play, so we were left with four. Since all four of us wanted to play, the tournament organizer (EA Megaman) let us have a four man team, and we'd just pick three people per set. We ended up taking third place, I think doing a good job of putting the NW region on the map :)

I'm looking forward to see videos on youtube of both the 1v1 and the 3v3 tournament for commentary!

ST: HDR patch

Looks like Capcom finally released a patch for HD Remix. Let's go over the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The good:
* Music seems fixed
* Lifebar glitch fixed
* I haven't had a disconnect yet (other than ragequits)
* Rankings are fixed, and matchmaking seems correlated to rankings. Within my first 7 games I was playing against strong players that were giving me a challenge. It was exciting and fun. That's good!

The bad:
* Players can see your win/loss record in the lobby now and just quit if they don't like it. That's idiotic. It shouldn't display at all
* Rankings are STILL by player, instead of by player/character combination. That's retarded. My Cammy is terrible. So is my Dhalsim. What does my Dhalsim score have anything to do with the score of characters I do play competitively? Rank player/character combinations.

The ugly:
* Akuma is still there. Just delete him from the select screen. He's completely broken and I'm willing to stand by that statement. He should be banned from tournaments.

Rapid Improvement: Part 2

In part 2 of this series, I want to focus on the next thing that causes beginners to lose games: Basic execution of special moves. There are two components to this.

1) reliable: Can you consistently do the move in training mode?
2) atomic: Do you think of it as one single action instead of a sequence of steps?

Reliable
I'm sure everyone can identify with the first part. "My opponent is jumping in, but I don't want to risk doing a dragon punch because I'm afraid I'll screw it up". You must have a strong command of the mechanics of doing the moves that you want to do. You simply cannot compete otherwise. I've seen beginners have a difficult time with what seem to be straightforward moves like Guile's flash kick:

* Insufficient charge
* Press button too early and get a hopping knee
* Press button too late and get a jumping kick
* Move joystick too slowly to up position
* Move joystick to forward position instead of up
etc..

Regardless of why they fail at execution, the impact of the failure is clear. Assume that you deal 15 damage on successful execution of a flash kick (to simplify I won't even go into the positional advantage of setting up a crossup afterwards). But if you fail, you eat a jump roundhouse, low roundhouse combo for 20 damage.

If you fail your flash kick half the time, then on average you are losing 5 damage per flashkick. Clearly blocking is better than taking 5 damage. The conclusion from this is: It's not worth trying for special moves unless you know you can do them.

Atomic
Atomic is the term I use when a move or sequence of moves is so ingrained that you cease to think of it as a series of joystick movements and button presses, and instead think of it as one "thing" to do.

It takes a lot of time and effort to think about what your next move has to be in a sequence. Here's an example from my personal play in another game, Virtua Fighter. In that game, the character Wolf has a combo whose stick motions are back, torward, punch + kick, torward, kick, up torward, punch + kick, towards, kick.

At first when I was learning this, I would get about one third of the way through the sequence on muscle memory, and then I'd have to think "what's next?", and remember the next series of button presses. By the time by brain finished remembering what was next in the sequence, I'd have very little time to actually execute.

If you can precache the entire sequence of desired moves into muscle memory, then you don't need to waste time thinking about how to do them during combat. This frees up a ton of time and attention on other things.

Level 2: The one hundred drill
In this drill, you go into training mode and do the move in question unil you have one hundred successes on each side, each day, for one week. So for example

flash kick, right hand side: 20 failures, 100 successes
flash kick, left hand side: 50 failures, 100 successes

Do this every day for one week, rain or shine, even if you are sick or tired. This will drill into into your muscle memory. You may be wondering why moves like flash kick, which are symmetrical, need to be drilled on both sides? The reason is that in play, you will be starting from a different blocking position on each side. So in play, the moves are different because they start from defensive crouch (which is different on each side).

Write down how many failures and how many successes you had each day, on what side. Post it on a public blog to track your improvement.

In the second week, do the same, but first to fifty successes.

After the second week drill is completed, do runs to twenty once a week to keep yourself in shape.

Rapid Improvement, Part 1

Recently I've been teaching a friend of mine the basics of the game. I've taught a fair number of people how to play, and I've come to realize that there are no good guides (that I know of) on how to improve, and improve rapidly.

Watching two beginners play street fighter is a lot like watching two beginners play chess. P1 makes a huge, game losing blunder. P2 then fails to capitalize on it, and makes his own game losing blunder. P1 incorrectly capitalizes on that, and makes his own blunder. It's hard not to cringe while watching.

But we've all been there. We've all started as newbies. When I was in college I had a systematic system to teach rank beginners how to play and how to improve. So I'd like to start a series on how to improve in your street fighter play rapidly.

Level 1: The blocking drill

Most rank beginners that I observe lose their games simply by failing to block. A typical losing beginner sequence will be something like the following (vs Ken)

1) Get hit by low roundhouse (should have blocked high)
2) Opponent jumps in with jump roundhouse and hits (should have blocked high)
3) Opponent follows up with a low roundhouse (should have blocked low)

I'll see this 3 hit sequence happen again and again in beginner play. The fundamental problem isn't uncommon at high level play either. I've won many games that I should have lost when my opponent simply failed to block a lethal jump in combo.

In college, I devised a drill that helped new players learn to block correctly. We both pick Ryu. One player has the role of attacker, and the other (the one doing the drill) has the role of defender.

The attacker attacks the defender with the following moves:
* any crouching kick
* any standing kick
* any jumping kick

The defender may only block.

The defender wins the drill if, by the time the timer has reached zero, he has taken no life.

Some tips for the attacker:
Jump roundhouse, low roundhouse
Walk up low roundhouse
Walk up, jump straight up roundhouse (on the way up)
Walk up, jump straight up roundhouse (on the way down)
Jump roundhouse, jump roundhouse again
Jump in whiff, low roundhouse (this one seems especially hard for beginners)
Stand roundhouse
Stand roundhouse, low roundhouse
Stand roundhouse, jump roundhouse

Scoring:
10 or more hits: Basic blocking is a fundamental problem. Keep practicing.
4-6 : You're getting better, but you will still lose your games because of blocking.
1-3 hits: Better. Keep doing this from time to time and strive to reach zero.
0 hits: Very good

I'm number one

I know these numbers are completely meaningless, but I can't help myself. It's probably the first and only time I'll ever be ranked first on a 360 game :)

I played a marathon all night session last night with the local seattle players to celebrate the arrival of ST:HDR, slept till 2, then promptly woke up and played again. It's fun to be excited about a video game again, I haven't felt this way since college!

I'm going to run down my impressions of the game. I'm sure that anything I post about balance will be wrong in the long run, but it's fun to speculate anyways!

UI:
Best new stage: Fei Long. His stage went from the most annoying stage music ever to one of the best. I love it!

Unranked matches: When I play unranked, I play a few games with my opponent and then a bunch of other players end up in the lobby. When I lose, I have to wait several games before it's my turn again. Why is it set up this way? I'm not particularly interested in watching two players I don't know play it out until it's my turn. Why can't I just keep playing against my opponent, GGPO style?

I found a wierd bug in the unranked matches. At one point stage music completely turned off, only to turn on again intermittently. Also, I was playing Blanka, and electrified Fei Long. He stayed with a crackling aura the entire game, it even lasted through the next round!

Ranked matches: I really wish your rank was tied to the character you select. Since the character selection is a double blind process, and you only play one game anyways, there's no meta game for the character selection process the way there is in standard tournaments. If I'm playing Chun Li, I'd like to have my ranking kept seperate from my ranking as M. Bison. This may be something that was out of Capcom's control, but it's still annoying.

Gameplay:
I was really afraid that the gameplay would be dreamcast like. I don't know why, but I've always had a really hard time pulling off combos on the DC. I can do them fine on arcade, but there's some subtle timing difference or something that makes the DC combos much harder for me. I was afraid the same would carry over on the xbox. Nope, not at all! I don't know if it's because the "randomness" was removed or what, but I can do my favorite Bison combos! Yay!

Characters:
Chun Li: I picked Chun Li with a sense of dread, thinking she'd been hit hard with the nerf bat. Reduced super damage, no big upkicks combo afterwards, and nerfed neckbreaker. She's be a shadow of her former self.
What I found is that she's a shadow of her former self if you are Nuki, NKI, Akishima, or some other excellent Chun Li player. If you're a good, but not great Chun Li like me, then she's got this incredible new move called lightning legs.

In classic ST, I've never been able to pull off combos like Standing Fierce -> Lightning Legs. I even have a really hard time with low forward -> legs. So now that the number of mashes have been reduced (an excellent idea), I can pull them off consistently. I can now poke with walking up low foward, lightning legs. It's a huge, huge difference for me. So top players that could already do all of this are probably sad at the state of the new Chun. But for me, I feel like I've been given a boost and can now do the things I could always see them do, but I could never do. I love her.

M. Bison: M. Bison is my nomination for most well designed all around character. I cannot stop gushing about how great his changes are. One tiny, tiny change was all that was needed, and it was the perfect tiny change. He has kept his powerful offense, and has been given one "get out of jail" card to improve his atrocious defense. The new devil's reverse, with invulnerability, gives him an option out of corner fireball and SPD traps that he never had before. The reason I think this change is so great is that it's not a guaranteed way out, it's just an option. If I'm in the corner and my opponent does a move that would trap the old Bison (last minute FB, or low jab-> SPD), I can now devils reverse to fly out safely. But if my opponent knows I will do this, he can simply delay his attack and nail me with almost any move. So Bison is still at a great disadvantage in the corner, but just not a game losing nothing-you-can-do disadvantage. Perfectly done.

Blanka: Blanka is my prediction for new monster, and I'm going to try to learn him. All of his old Komoda blanka nastiness, which was already deadly, and an overall improved set of moves. I think he will end up being very, very good.

Cammy: I can't seem to get the right "flow" of Cammy, but Jason Cole was destroying everyone last night with her without even breaking a sweat. She seems to have all the offensive power of Bison, Blanka, and Balrog, but without even having to think about charging moves. I guess we'll have to see what happens with her.

Balrog: Felt pretty much the same, honestly.

Tournament reports - PNW majors

So I've realized that my old tournament report strategy is fail. What I've been doing is after a tournament, instead of posting immediately, I want to wait for youtube videos to come out so that I can analyze the matches and write about what I did wrong/right.
However, what happens is that by the time the video comes out it's old news (to me), and I don't have the motivation to post anymore. So I'll write up my backlog of reports now.

Pacific Northwest Majors (6/28/08)
Round one, I played against a Dhalsim player and almost lost. Holy shit! That was kind of a kick in the ass for me, and I think I "woke up" and played better.

In the winners finals, I played LTB's O. Ken on my very own ST cab. He just flat out raped me (I went with Boxer). However, I did notice something -- the way that he was raping me. What was happening was that he was throwing out fireballs from long range, letting me jump over them, and then walking up and throwing me. I know that's a basic as hell strategy but it's also very effective. I use it myself all the time when I'm playing against Boxer.
So I thought a lot about my loss, and came up with an idea of how to beat him if I was lucky enough to make it to winners finals.

Then I was in the losers finals where I played Alex Kelly. His Guile has gotten a lot better. He's pretty consistent about landing his crossup short combo, and that can be pretty scary. I decided it would be too risk to play Boxer or Dictator against him, so my choices were Claw or Chun Li. I feel that although Claw can dominate more, it's also an easier match to lose than Chun. In other words, I see Chun Li vs Guile as a 60-40 match with low variance, while Claw is like a 70-30 match but with high variance. I decided I preferred the more consistent match, so I went with Chun.

I ended up losing the first match, which was another kick in the ass. I think I was playing too conservatively, and letting the match become 50-50. I realized that I had to take more risks, but that those risks would be in my favor. I changed my gameplay and was able to win against Alex.

Then I had the finals vs LTB. I started with Claw, which was a bad idea, and got raped. I then went with Boxer where I had a new idea. My idea was to jump over his slow fireballs, but use jumping strong, which would hit his head if he started to walk up to throw me. If that didn't work I would immediately crouch and be ready to hit low fierce, because I noticed LTB liked to do an immediate jump RH to set up his throws. I figured even if that traded, it would put me in a great position of knocking him down. Plus more importantly, I wouldn't lose ground. My ultimate goal was to get him to be in the corner, where he likes to do jump up and jump back roundhouses. I figured that if I can get him to play that game, I've won -- it's just too hard for Ken to guess right every time.

I was able to do that and you can see the video here.

http://zachd.com/mvc2/matches/seattle/Pacific%20Northwest%20Majors%202008-06-28/footage%20from%20RayBladeX/SuperTurbo.wmv

I'll follow up with a post about Evo, and then one about this weekend's Random Select Fall showdown.

Old A3 tournament report from Japan

While I was looking up on google groups for my old postings about Kurahashi, I stumbled on this:

Japan A3 Tournament Report

I thought it might be good to post for some laughs :)

Landing combos more consistently

One of the nice things about GGPO is that you can watch what other players do, and pick up tidbits that you haven't incorporated into your game yet. I was watching Hentaikamen, who is very strong (at least by my standards :) ), and who pretty much took me apart with his Dictator.

One thing I saw was that he was starting a lot of his jumpins with jumping jab. I thought this was a little bit wierd, as usually my Dictator jumps in with

a) Roundhouse, because it does more damage.
b) Strong, because I can hit once on the way up and once on the way down, for more chances to hit if my opponent jumps back at me.
c) Forward, because it has hitting frames all the way to the ground.

So it seemed wierd to me that this great player was using what appeared to be a suboptimal jumpin. Why was he using jab?

I experiemented with it, and I found that jump jab lands you much closer to your opponent than the other options above. This has a real effect on gameplay, because it's very easy to be out of range for your favorite combo with Dictator. Specifically, one thing I absolutely hate is when I jump in from the front, land my jump in, then follow with a standing short, low forward, scissor kick combo -- except the low forward whiffs out of range. That's really annoying and can often lose you the round in terms of opportunity cost.

When I tried with jumping jab, I never whiffed my low forward. So by using jumping jab, you're giving up damage for consistency, something that is totally worth it.

It might seem really obvious to some, but I'd never really thought of mixing up my jumpin attacks (Why use anything other than the "best" choice?).

It's the same "aha" moment I had when I first saw Kurahashi playing boxer in Japan

And saw him playing against Dhalsim too.

Kurahashi would just jumping strong (what I call his "curly punch") to jump in with instead of roundhouse, for the exact same reason. Jump strong lands you closer to the opponent, letting you do low jab x2, low strong, into a series of options (at least that was what Kurahashi mainly used). Back then, I would only jump in with Roundhouse, because it did the most damage. It took my seeing a superior player using something else for me to question my basic assumptions.

Looks like almost ten years later, I still haven't learned my lesson.

GGPO

Last week I discovered GGPO. I'm amazed at what I've been missing not playing on this. There's some really top caliber players there, including Graham and Alex Wolfe, Alex Valle, and some very good Japanese players.

There's also been nightly tournaments at 9pm PST, which are great practice for Evo. I find one problem on GGPO is that I'm always tempted to play my "fun" characters instead of my tournament characters, but the tournaments are a great way to force myself to play my real characters.

It's also very nice because you can watch other players. I highly recommend it for everyone, whether a new player or an experienced veteran!

Leaning back with Boxer

Here's a little tip I learned from Graham Wolfe.

Boxer leans back really far when he's in the standing block position. His sprite is actually a few pixels further away than when he is crouching. So if you have your super charged, and are waiting for your opponent to throw a fireball, you can use this to your advantage to get a few extra frames.

What you do is sit in the crouching back position, as you normally would (to charge down and back). When you see your opponent throw a fireball, move the stick to the standing back position, and THEN do your super motion. You'll have a few extra frames to do the super before the fireball hits you, and a few extra frames is a big deal!

Pacific Northwest Summer Majors

Tomorrow is the pacific northwest majors! It will be a lot of fun! It looks like last winter's tournament attracted enough attention that we will have some Canadian players coming down.

Since the event is in Seattle, I'll be bringing my cabinet there. The thing is *very* heavy, but I have two friends coming to help move it. Sacha and I barely got it up the stairs when I first had it delivered over a year ago, but we were only two. Hopefully having three people will make a difference.

I'm still not sure who to play. It's been about a year since I started playing Dictator. He's by far my favorite character, but I still don't feel really "tournament worthy" with him. I still feel that when push comes to shove, I'm better off playing Claw or Boxer, my old staples. Case in point, at Evo I didn't play a single round of Dictator. Now if the tournament were on my cabinet, I might seriously consider playing him. I've found that I land my combos much more reliably on the cabinet. I'm pretty sure that there is a speed difference between Dreamcast and Arcade, and since most tournaments are on Dreamcast these days, but I only have the cabinet at home to practice, my timing is off. Combos matter much more with Dictator than they do with Boxer or Claw, so I really feel that my expected win percentage goes down a lot on Dreamcast.

I'm also interested in following the news of the ST:HDR beta on 360. I don't plan on getting the beta, but I'll be interested in seeing it at Zach's tournament tonight. From what I've read on SRK, it sounds like Ken is pretty ridiculous. That's funny, because Ken seemed really scary when I read about his list of changes :). Hopefully he will be toned down in the final build -- then again everything is changing so much that it's hard to find a point of reference. Who knows what "too good" means when everyone has been buffed up to the "too good" level anyways?

Random Select Winter Showdown

I've been meaning to write up a post about the Random Select Winter Showdown (Pacific Northwest Regionals), after Pablo wrote a post about the experience. I wanted to wait until videos were up, so that I could look at them, and analyze how I could do better.

First of all, I want to congratulate Pablo and Alex for doing an amazing job. Pablo went undefeated through the winners bracket until the finals. Alex beat RayBladeX, an excellent Boxer, and previous top 8er at Evo, not just once, but twice -- in the winners bracket and in the losers bracket. In fact, I think I owe the tournament to Alex. I played Ray Boxer v Boxer in the 5 on 5 exhibition match afterwards, and he trounced me. Alex's Guile has improved dramatically in the last 6 months. Congratulations.

Here is my winners finals match with Pablo (I am playing Dictator)


Here is the grand finals, with Alex (I am playing Dictator/Chun Li)


Reviewing these matches, one thing I notice immediately about my play is that I'm missing a lot of combo opportunities. There are several points where Alex whiffs a flash kick, where I should be able to do standing short, low forward, scissor kick. Even just low forward into scissor kick would be simple and damaging. Yet I find myself not doing this basic combo properly -- a combo I can do in my sleep in casual matches.

One way I can improve then, is to simply get better at execution. It's easy to fall into the trap of only practicing high end, difficult combos. But failing bread and butter combos like the ones I mention above can cost the match. I think my problem is that since I "know" that I can do them already, I don't bother practicing. But then when it's tournament time, I miss the opportunities I am given.

When I played in Japan, I remmeber playing against Kurahashi and getting *one* chance like that a game, if I was lucky. High end play requires maximizing these chances every time, and I need to do better there.

Tournament website

I've been spending the last few weekends working on a new project, my Super Turbo Rankings Website. I've finally launched an alpha release. I haven't worked on any styling, right now it's just functionality over form.

I've also taken this opportunity to explore coding in ruby on rails. I could have done this in Perl, which is a language I've developed in professionally, but I thought I'd take this chance to try something new and learn a new language and framework. I was extremely impressed by Ruby, and by the Rails framework. I think it actually took me less time in RoR, even taking in the learning curve, than it would have taken me in Perl!

I want to describe the application a little bit. There are two main pages, the players page and the tournaments page. The tournaments page shows you a list of tournaments, and you can click on a tournament to view details about that tournament. Click on any player name you see to be taken to that player's information page. Right now I only support double elimination tournaments, and I plan on having support for single elimination, round robin, and just a random collection of matches.

On the players page, you can see a list of players ordered by handle. It also shows you the players' TrueSkill ranking. If you click on that player's profile, you can see more information about how their ranking came to be, including a history of all their matches, and how their ranking evolved over time. There's also a graph showing how their ranking has evolved over time.

Your ranking is defined by two numbers, your mu and your sigma. These two numbers define a probability curve. Your ranking is somewhere under that curve, with the most likely ranking being the mu value. The sigma is a representation of your uncertainty. If you have a small simga, your curve is tall and narrow (like the red curve below). If your sigma is high, you have a short and fat curve (like the greed curve below).



Your total level is mu - 3*(sigma). This is a conservative estimate of the actual level , meaning your actual level is probably much higher. This prevents people from winning one tournament, and then being at the top of the rankings forever. Such a player would have a high mu but a low sigma. We don't want that player to be more highly ranked than someone that does well consistently.

I plan to add a plot showing the distribution curve of their ranking.

I also show how a player's ranking evolves over time.

Here's a sample graph:



As expected, the red curve (mu), is always higher than the green curve (level). Also, as expected, as the player plays more games, the level approaches the mu more closely. This is because the player's sigma value goes down over time.

I think this should be a fun way to compare the skill of two players who have never played each other. It's also good to have a detailed record of tournaments. I don't think we have the full brackets for older tournaments (like old Evos), but we can enter the data we do have, and see how the numbers shake out. It is my hope that in the future, this will become the comprehensive site for ST tournament records.

Rebalanced mode and fake fireballs

I'd like to comment a bit on the decision to give ryu a fake fireball in ST rebalanced mode.

Before I start, I want to say that I disagree with the premise of how capcom/backbone is choosing to address the rebalancing. As they mentioned in the first blog post

My goal is to buff up the worst characters so they reach the middle (or upper middle at best). Next, buff the middle characters slightly, but not so much that they become top tier. And finally, leave the top tier characters intact.

I don't disagree with the idea that power levels need to change. What I do disagree with is keeping the top tier intact, and "buffing up" so that lower and mid tier characters are higher in power.

As I mentioned before, I think that the way to do it is to keep the "core" tier intact, and bring the power levels closer together by slightly reducing the power of the top tier characters, so that they are still very good, but missing the really broken stuff, and then buffing up the low tier slightly.

I think the core tier characters are:
Ryu
Ken
Guile
DeeJay

Ryu and Guile especially stand out to me as examples of excellent design. They are both extremely strong in the best hands, but no one would call them the best characters. They are the epitome of skill rewarding play. Players that win tournaments with ryu or guile are just plain good.

I think it's a much better design decision to keep these core characters they way they are, and bring the rest around them. You actually end up changing fewer characters this way: In both systems, you have to help the lowest tier. However, in the "keep the core" system(that I am a proponent of), you only have to bring the top tier down, which is four characters (Claw, Dhalsim, Boxer, and Sagat). On the other hand, in the "buff people up" system, you have to bring the entire middle tier up. Since the middle tier is much larger than the top tier, you touch more characters.

The other reason I think that the "buff up" system is wrong is highlighted in this quote from David Sirlin:

Also, as I said when I rebalanced Puzzle Fighter, we already know what the game felt like with the previous top tier characters, and it was fun, so it’s better to balance the game around that power level than a new, lower power level.

As I mentioned on srk.com, I don't think that the game at the top tier is nearly as fun as the game at the mid-tier!

I completely disagree with Toodle's position of "never nerf". Why? As a vega player, I can tell you that I've beaten very very good players with repeated wall dives. I don't think this is a fun part of the game. In fact, I've played the Japanese system of soft banning Vega and O Sagat, and you know what? The game was much more fun. And it was more fun because I didn't have to play or play against these idiotic, repeatable traps.

Chun li vs Guile is a fun, intense matchup. Every pixel of spacing matters. There's countless decisions to make. Do I block his jab sonic boom? Do I jump straight up over it? Should I try to trade with a low forward, or will he anticipate that with a backfist?
I haven't seen that kind of depth in most fights that involve O Sagat and Vega. Vega *can* be played in a powerful, complex, and dominating way, but the easiest way to just win is to do wall dives. Similarly with O Sagat's tiger shots.

I think it's high time to remove these kinds of moves. I want more fights like Chun li vs Guile, Zangief vs Hawk, Ryu vs Ken, and Dictator vs DeeJay. Those are fun, stimulating, and exciting fights. There's books to write on those fights.

I want to give Dhalsim, Claw, and O Sagat a chance to have those fights too. Getting rid of those extremely specific and abuseable moves is a great way to keep the inherent power and complexity of the character without destroying the entire game ecosystem they reside in.

The mid tier's fights are more exciting, more deep, and reward decision making better than the fights at the top tier. Changing the mid-tier is dangerous, because you risk losing those great mid-tier fights that I think really define the game.

So that said, I disagree that Ryu should be given any changes, because I think Ryu and his core compatriots are perfect as is.

That said, that is a disagreement with the premise of the change, which is the "buff up" system. I disagree with the "buff up" system, and I think the right call is the "keep the core" system, for the reasons above.

However, I'd still like to discuss the change in Ryu given the "buff up" system. So even though I disagree with the "buff up" system, I want to put aside that fact for now, and discuss what Ryu's change will do in the context of that system.

In this context, I think Ryu's fake fireball will make him stronger. This is hard to evaluate without context, because I don't know how other characters have been changed. Since I don't have that information, I have to think of how the normal ST characters would be affected. This would make Ryu more powerful at mid range, and especially more powerful in the corner. It would be even more difficult for characters like Honda, Chun Li, Dicatator, and Ken to get out of his corner traps.

There is one thing that I think is an absolute must. Ryu's fake fireball should not give him super meter. One doesn't have to look any further than SF3 to see why. SF3 is a game dominated by running away and charging meter. Players are rewarded by not interacting with their opponents, and instead doing safe moves repeatedly that charge up their meter. Once they have it, they approach their opponent.

Ryu already has one of the safest meter building moves in the game, with his jumping back hurricane kick. This is a move that at least forces Ryu to give up a resource, his position relative to the corner. But if the fake fireball built meter, Ryu would have a way to charge meter that would (presumably) be impossible to punish at mid range (if it was possible to punish at mid range, you might as well do a normal fireball, and the move would not be very useful). This would completely change Ryu's dynamic. Ryu players would have a huge incentive to do fake fireballs to charge meter, at which point they have one of the best supercombos in the game at their disposal. It would greatly sadden me to see one of the pinnacles of character design be overshadowed by a meter building strategy.

No meter for fake fireballs.

Option selecting Psycho Crusher/Scissor Kicks

I've been playing a little bit more of dictator at my weekly gatherings, and I've realized that sometimes I just don't have enough charge for a scissor kicks combo. I realized this when I crossed over a zangief player with jumping forward, and then did three standing shorts. Usually this combos into scissor kicks but sometimes the kicks weren't coming out.

This might be because of the variables charge times in super turbo, and because dictator's scissor kicks is the longest charge time move in the game. The speed at which I press the standing shorts is probably affecting my charge time. If I did a pyscho crusher instead, I would probably have gotten that out every time, but I was greedy and going for the longer charge time pyscho crusher.

Should I stop going for crossover scissor kick combos? No! I had the idea that maybe I could go for an option select.

The idea would be:
Jump with crossup forward
Keep holding lever back
Stand short x 3
Move lever towards opponent
Press roundhouse kick and fierce punch one right after the other

If you have a long enough charge for the scissor kick, the roundhouse kick input should give you a scissor kick. However, if you don't have a long enough charge, then the roundhouse kick should come out for a very short time (1 frame or so), and then get kara cancelled into the fierce pyscho crusher!

So you get to have your cake and eat it too. You can try for the scissor kicks, but if it doesn't come out.

This can also be useful in Dictator's other standard combo
Crossover forward
Stand short x 2
Low foward
Fierce Psycho Crusher

Replace the last "Fierce Psycho Crusher" with a roundhouse instantly followed by a fierce, and you should be able to try for the more damaging combo safely.

I've tried this on my machine, and it seems to work. However, to really prove that this works, perhaps some kind reader would try it out on an emulator? I really need to learn how to set up inputs on emulators. Proving this kind of stuff would be great.